The Importance of Being a Prophet

Mather grounds the affiliation of the two testaments in Jesus’s authority as the Messiah. Historian Jonathan Israel suggests that Jesus’s authority as a prophet was challenged in the

seventeenth century, particularly by Benedict Spinoza. In Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670),

Spinoza argues that Jesus was not a prophet but a wise person with awareness of universal human doctrines (Israel 195). Spinoza had a lasting impact on exegesis, Israel argues, because he had powerful friends (181). His Dutch friends, called the “Collegiants,” were anti-Trinitarians who rejected ecclesiastical hierarchy (182). This party influenced English thought and fueled the movement that led to Unitarianism (190).

Mather uses examples of Jesus’s accurate prophecies to illustrate that Jesus was the Messiah. In John 2:19, “our Lord utters His first Praediction, of His own Death” (“BA” 8: John 2:19). Mather explains that, through his prophecies, Jesus reveals how Christianity will replace Judaism. Mather suggests that the place where Jesus prophesied about his death was particularly significant: “in ye Temple, ye place of Sacrifice, were His First Words about His own Death,

wherein Hee was to Terminate all sacrifice, by ye Sacrifice of Himself” (“BA” 8: John 2:19).

Jesus demonstrates his omniscience again in Luke when Pharisees order him to rebuke his disciples, and he prophesies that “if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out” (Luke 19:40). Jesus implies that even if his disciples did not defend him, the stones would. Mather interprets these words as referring to Jesus’s execution, because as he died, “the stones then opened their Mouths, and the Rocks, by Rending as it should seem, with a mighty

Noise, cry’d out against ye Murderers” (“BA” 7: Luke 19:40). These natural events are described

in Matthew: “And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent” (Matt. 27:51). Luke mentions different natural events at Jesus’s death: “And the sun was darkened and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst” (Luke 23:45). Mather unites the Gospel narratives so that this supposed prophesy related in Luke refers to an event related in Matthew.

Since Luke and Mark do not mention the earthquake, Mather uses extra-biblical sources

that he thinks provide natural evidence of it (c.f. KJV Mark 15:33-38). In The Loganthropos

(1707), Robert Fleming162 relates that an acquaintance told him about the experiences of a

traveler in the Holy Land (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:51). This traveler, a deist, would “make merry” with

162 _{Robert Fleming (ca. 1660-1716) was a Presbyterian minister in Leiden, Rotterdam, and London. He} was considered an authority on classical and oriental languages and was offered the principalship of Glasgow University, which he declined (Mercer). His most famous writing was a two-volume work on Christology based on lectures he delivered in London (Mercer).

the stories related by the tour guides about the sacred places they visited, “and particularly, when

they first shew’d him the clefts in the Rock of Mount Calvary” (Fleming 98). However, when he

looked closer at the clefts, he told his fellow travelers: “I have been Long a Student of Nature, & the Mathematicks, and I am sure, These Clefts and Rents in this Rock, were never made by a

Natural Ordinary Earthquake” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:51, c.f. Fleming 98). He supposedly converted

immediately and pronounced the shape of the clefts “a Real Miracle, which neither Nature nor

Art could have ever Effected” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:51). The new convert, thanking God for the

sight, declared the rocks a “Monument” of God’s power, which “gives Evidence, to this Day, to the Divinity of Christ” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:51, c.f. Fleming 98). However apocryphal the

anecdote, Mather, by way of Fleming, uses this story to support Jesus’s standing as both prophet and God. It also illustrates that here Mather did not seek, but rather spurned, a scientific

explanation for a miracle. While elsewhere in his commentary, Mather emphasizes how God’s miracles might be physically possible, here the lack of scientific explanation, in the eyes of the traveler through Canaan, at least, makes the miracle compelling. Mather also mentions other extra-biblical, but historical, accounts of the event: he claims that Phlegon,163 Pliny, and Thallus all described the earthquake, and Mather suggests, further implying the supernatural essence of

the event, that “it was probably universal; ye whole Earth felt ye Shock of it” (“BA” 7: Matt.

27:n.v.). He does not explain why he makes this assumption.

Jesus’s miracles were further proof of his legitimacy as the Messiah, Mather argues. Because Mather believed that miracles were God’s way of supporting a ministry in the early stages of the Christian church, he sometimes leans on them as evidence not of Jesus’s divinity but his standing as a prophet. For this reason, the apostles praise Jesus as “a prophet mighty in

163 _{Phlegon of Tralles (d. ca. 140), a Greek historian, and Thallus (first century C.E.), a Roman historian.} They were quoted by Origen and Julius Africanus, respectively (Ussher 822).

deed and word before God and all the people” (Luke 24:19). Mather argues that the apostles

meant “that God gave a Testimony unto His being such a Prophet, by His mighty operations

accompanying of Him” (“BA” 7: Luke 24:19). To modern critical eyes, the apostles’ testimony would seem to indicate that they considered Jesus a prophet rather than God. Almost in support of this argument, Mather argues in another gloss that even mere humans could perform miracles to prove the legitimacy of their ministry. Jesus prophesies in Mark 16 regarding Christians: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues” (Mark 16:17). The Bible provides several examples of God’s messengers performing incredible deeds, including resurrections: Elijah and Elisha both bring dead children back to life, Peter raises a dead woman, and Paul revives a young man (1 Kings 17:22, 2 Kings 4:35, Acts 9:40, Acts 20:10). However, Mather argues that Jesus’s prophecy about believers refers not only to the apostles, but to other early Christians after the canonical texts had been written. Irenaeus and Origen both claim that believers cast out devils in Jesus’s name (“BA” 7:

Mark 16:17). Origen, Mather remarks, “saies, that even Ideots among ye Christians, did Expel

Divels, not by any Curious or Magical Act but by such Prayers as may be made by the Simplest of men” (“BA” 7: Mark 16:17). Miracles, then, would not prove Jesus’s divinity any more than they would prove early Christians’ divinity.

For Mather, proving that Jesus was a prophet was important because it was a way of establishing biblical harmony. Because other Gospels and alternative histories of the Earth were gaining increasing attention in scholarly circles during the early Enlightenment, conservative exegetes like Mather strove to emphasize the legitimacy of the Protestant canon in order to explain why the New Testament canon was the legitimate record of Jesus’s life and the early Christian church to the exclusion of other Gospels and ancient records. One means of proving its

legitimacy was to illustrate how closely it corresponds to the Old Testament. In his gloss on Moses and Elias’s appearance on the mountain during Jesus’s transfiguration in Luke 9, Mather suggests that the Old Testament figures testified not only about Jesus’s death but his general mission when they, according to the verse, “spake of his decease, which he should accomplish in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Citing Lightfoot, Mather argues that the word translated “decease” in

the King James Version should actually be rendered “exodus” and so “it intends His Ascension

into the Heavens, as well as His Death” (“BA” 7: Luke 9:31, c.f. Lightfoot, 1823, 12:88). Mather

adds that Moses and Elias “Discoursed with our Lord, no doubt, about His Death,” and that the

passage indicates a conversation between Jesus and the two Old Testament figures, rather than a prophecy spoken by them about him (“BA” 7: Luke 9:31). The King James Version states that they “talked with him,” so this is not a fanciful reading on Mather’s part (Luke 9:30).

Citing Witsius’s interpretation of the passage, Mather elaborates that the “exodus,” might

have referred as well to “our Lord’s Going forth out of Jerusalem, carrying His Cross, when He

went unto His Crucifixion” (“BA” 7: Luke 9:31). It is a passage that simultaneously

demonstrates Jesus’s omniscience, God’s approval of his mission, and his role in the biblical narrative. Mather goes so far as to add, in agreement with Grotius, that the passage also alludes

to the “Departure of Israel out of Egypt” (“BA” 7: Luke 9:31). Even though it may seem to make

little sense that Moses and Elias would prophesy about the past, this reading by Grotius suggests that these Jewish fathers allude to Israel’s previous triumph in order to include Jesus in all of biblical history, lending their own authority in support of his.

Mather explains that “Moses was ye first prophet of ye Jewes and Elias ye first prophet of ye Gentiles,” implying that the appearance of them both together symbolized the commissioning of a new, equally valid prophet (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:1). He describes them, citing Robert

Fleming’s Christology, as “the Representatives of the Ancient Church” who are there to “Attend

upon our Lord, the Great Accomplisher of the Law; and they consent unto His being the

Abolisher of it” (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:21). However, Mather ironically clarifies that Jesus’s mission did not need verification by Jewish leaders because he himself was the true authority figure:

“They both of them now attend their Master, the Saviour both of Jewes and Gentiles” (“BA” 7:

Matt. 17:21). Somewhat contrarily, Mather argues that Moses and Elias appear in positions that are at once both authoritative and subservient. They appear at the Transfiguration to validate Jesus’s mission while acknowledging their own inferiority, even though they thereby invalidate the authority by which they claim to speak. This confusion may be why he hesitates to state

blatantly that they lent their ethos to Jesus: “Moses and Elias, ye Two most Memorable persons

of ye Old-Testament Dispensation, did now also appear in Glory; Tho’ Doubtless a Glory

inferiour to that of their LORD; from whom they borrowed it” (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:21). The transfiguration itself, Mather felt, demonstrated Jesus’s fulfillment of the Old Testament’s expectations. With his shining face and raiment described in Matthew 17:2, Jesus exhibited “ye Distinct Glories of both Moses and Aaron” (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:1). Each of these ancient Israelites experienced one of those glories, yet “neither of those had Both; but both of these are now seen on our Transfigured Lord” (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:1). This demonstration of Old Testament glories in front of the very Jewish fathers who had similar experiences illustrated the kinship between their stories, Mather implies.

Mather dances around equating Jesus with the Jewish fathers, as he saw them as inferior to him but recognized that Jews in Jesus’s time would have revered them. That reverence is reflected in Matthew, which seems to have made Mather uncomfortable, since the Gospels were supposedly written to show the superiority of Christianity. Noticing how highly Matthew writes

of Moses and Elias, Mather quotes Fleming’s paraphrase in order to put words praising Jesus into Peter’s mouth. When they see Moses and Elias, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias” (Matt. 17:4). According to Fleming, Peter worried that Jesus had not received sufficient respect from contemporary Jews and so he was recommending the creation of a new “Abode” to “make this mountain, the same to the Jewes now, that Sinai was of old unto their Fathers” (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:21). Fleming’s Peter assumed that this association would command

respect: “When Moses and Elias shall appear to them again, they will no more doubt, that thou

art ye Messiah, especially when they shall point thee out thus, in the Glory wherein thou art at present” (“BA” 7: Matt. 17:21). As Mather does not add further commentary on Fleming’s rendering, he apparently agreed with it.